


#12: The Aftermath

by Winchester_Writer



Series: 10 Times Tony Stark Saved Peter Parker and 2 Times He Couldn't [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, suicide warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 05:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20334529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winchester_Writer/pseuds/Winchester_Writer
Summary: Peter isn't doing so well after Tony passes.ENDGAME SPOILERSTrigger warning: anxiety, depression, and suicide.





	#12: The Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is the last part to this series! It has been a joy to write it and see all of the love I have received on it. Thank you so much for reading and following along with this story! I hope that this is the first series in a long line of stories and series. I'll see you on the next page!

“Peter Parker, the world needs you once again.”

Peter looked up, he was still sitting on the ground in a puddle of water, tears streaming down his face as the voices and people attacked him with their words. 

“Doctor Strange?” Peter choked out, his voice hoarse from crying and not using it for days. 

“This is our one shot to save the world, you can see Tony again, and we have a battle to fight.”

The battle was more like a war, according to Peter. So many things were happening all at once. All Peter knew was that his Dad was here, he had hugged him, held him, known for certain that he was real. Then, it was over. They had won, Thanos and his army were disappearing. Peter cheered and jumped into the air. 

“Dad, we won!”   


There was no response. Peter looked around furiously, then he saw him. Mr. Stark was sitting against a rock, his breaths coming in short gasps. Peter was gone in a flash, next to his dad’s side. 

“Dad, Dad, Mr. Stark!”

He wasn’t responding.

“Dad, hey dad. It’s Peter, it’s your Underoos. I’m here. We won, dad, we did it. You did it. We saved them, it’s okay.”

Tony looked up at him, “Hey Underoos.”

“Yeah, I’m here dad. Everything’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna be okay.”

Peter’s voice cracked, the tears streaming down his face, but he couldn’t break, he wouldn’t allow himself to. He needed to be strong for his dad, it was his turn to help Tony. 

“Pete, I love you.”

“I love you too, dad. It’s gonna be okay, you’re okay, I promise.”

Pepper stepped in then, gently pulling Peter away and going up to Tony. The billion, genius, playboy, philanthropist… Iron Man, the hero, the savior of the world, the father, took his last breath in Pepper’s arms. Peter was in shock, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, all he saw was tears and red and his dad lying on the ground. He wasn’t breathing, his dad was gone, turning pale in the face, his eyes closed in a sleep that he would never wake up from. Everybody was standing in silence, all looking at the fallen Tony Stark, nobody moved and nobody talked. Not until Peter lost it. He screamed, loud and ripping at his throat, he was screaming out loud, as if the screaming would somehow bring his dad back. 

“NOOOOOO!” the scream was torn from him as he kicked a piece of debris. 

He kicked it again, then the punches came, punching and screaming and crying, wishing that none of this had ever happened. He felt a hand wrapping around his shoulder and he immediately tried to fight it off. To throw the hand off of him and to run from everything that happened. Peter continued to scream, his voice becoming hoarse. 

“Petey, it’s me, it’s Uncle Rhodey, you’re okay.”   


Peter continued to struggle against him, until Uncle Rhodey sushed him and he finally just crumpled, letting Rhodey support him. Rhodey picked Peter up and carried him off into the palace in Wakanda. The next day, Peter walked into the lounge where everyone was. He looked around and immediately noticed the absence of not just Mr. Stark, but another one of the Avengers wasn’t present. 

“Clint, where’s Aunt Nat?”   


Clint looked up from where he was sitting at the table. He gulped and visibly shrunk, afraid to tell Peter what had happened. Steve looked up from his breakfast and towards Clint, then to the kid. 

“Son,” Steve began, “I’m sorry.”

“What happened?”

“We lost two good Avengers because of Thanos. We lost Tony and we lost your Aunt Natasha.”

They all prepared for the worst, for the screaming and crying and the anger like he had yesterday. He simply nodded his head and let the tears fall silently. Peter walked away and wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even Uncle Rhodey. No one got him to say a word, not even at the funeral did Peter say anything. He simply stood silently, watching the casket with misty eyes. Everyone left, entering Tony’s cabin, but Peter walked to the lake and fell to his knees. 

“I’m so sorry, dad.”

Peter pulled out a picture of him and Tony, the two were posing for a picture when Peter became an official recipient of a “Stark Internship.” Along with the picture he pulled out a small note-book. It was the note-book that he and Tony wrote all their good memories down in. It was a way for them to remember all the good times they had together. Peter stuck the picture into the first page of the book and then set it into the water, pushing it off of the shore. Peter didn’t move for hours, finally Happy walked out and helped him up. 

“Peter, where do you want to go? You can go back to Stark Tower and stay there, or you can go back to your apartment. I know neither are good options, but it’s the best we’ve got right now.”

“Can I, can I go back to the Tower?” 

“Of course.”

Happy drove Peter back to the Tower and Peter got out of the car without a single word. He grabbed his back-pack and walked up the stairs all the way to his floor. Peter couldn’t even bear to look at the kid’s area, it would be too painful. He bypassed that level and went straight to his room. Peter shuddered as he reached for the door to go through the lab. He had to go through the lab to get to his room. Peter opened the door slowly and then walked through swiftly, trying to avoid looking at anything. He almost got all the way through the lab, but then a glint of light and metal caught his eye. Peter looked up and made direct eye-contact with the latest Iron-Man suit that he and Mr. Stark had been working on. Without thinking, he grabbed the nearest wrench and chucked it at the suit. It hit the helmet and then bounced down to the ground. Peter started grabbing everything he could, chucking each item to the ground or at the walls. About an hour later and the entire lab was trashed. He fell down into the corner of the room and just started to cry. Peter sat there all night long, finally falling asleep with his back in the corner. When he woke up the next day he looked around the room, sadly. Peter stood up and started to walk around slowly, grabbing different tools and parts off the ground and putting them in their proper place. The last thing he grabbed was the Iron-Man helmet, he dusted it off, and then put his head against it. 

“I miss you, dad. I miss you so much.”

He looked at the helmet as if he expected it to answer him, but it never did. Peter put the helmet back on shelf and then walked out of the lab. He could barely ever go into the lab, only to walk to and from his room. There was no way that he could work there. School started back up a couple of weeks later and Peter had to drag himself through the halls. Ned and MJ attempted to talk to Peter, but no one could get through to him. He barely said a word in class and he wouldn’t talk to anyone, he just walked through the halls, a blank stare on his face and tears glistening the corner of his eyes.

It was a week after school started back up when the first panic attack hit. It hit like a truck, knocked him flat down, and he couldn’t get himself back up. He was curled up on the floor, leaning against the couch. Peter was shaking, his breath wouldn’t come, and he couldn’t pull himself out of his head. Mr. Stark wasn’t there to do it for him this time. He stayed there the entire night, finally dragging himself up and out of the Tower to go to school. His bones rattled like a chain link fence, clinking against his skin, his weight-loss evident, but hidden by the baggy MIT sweatshirt he was wearing. The fresh cuts on his arms covered by long sleeves, but his dark circles were evident on his face. He had barely slept since the whole ordeal had happened.

To be honest, Peter felt like he had been abandoned. Happy had texted him a couple of times since everything had gone down, but that was it. Pepper, Uncle Rhodey, Clint, even Steve hadn’t reached out to him since he had lost his dad. Maybe they didn’t know how close Peter and Tony were, or maybe they just didn’t care. He decided to go with the latter thought. It was easier to just add that to the list of things that were causing the depression that was eating him alive. 

At this point, Spiderman was nonexistent. He couldn’t even look at the suit without breaking-down or crying. There was no way that Peter could go on patrol at this point, it would destroy him. Everything had come crashing down so violently and he couldn’t handle everything. Peter was desperate for some sort of human interaction, with someone who wouldn’t judge him. After a month, Peter was finally okay enough to re-open the kids center at Stark Tower. Sarah was there the first day it was open and Peter picked her up, hugging her tightly. He held her hand and took her over to the coloring table so that they could draw together. It helped to cheer him up, but it wasn’t a permanent fix. As soon as Sarah was gone, the depression was back. 

Peter was sinking, he was going into a deep, dark hole and there was no one to pull him out of it. He was falling and there was no one there to catch him. Mr. Stark was gone and there was no denying it, no fixing it, no magic stones to bring him back. Peter started taking long walks around Manhattan, not caring where he ended up. The cuts on his arms became deeper and the thoughts in his head became darker. 

He had lost over 50 pounds now, his clothes hanging baggily on his bones that quaked with every step he took. His body felt as broken as his heart. Peter got into street fights just to feel some sort of pain other than the one that rumbled in his head and chest. He would go home with black eyes and bruises, wishing that the bruises hurt as much as the memories of Mr. Stark. Peter sat on the couch one day, thinking about everything that Mr. Stark and him had gone through. 

They had gone to a water-park. That was the last great memory that Peter had. They were talking in the lab about theme parks and water-parks, Peter had let it slip that he had never been to a water-park. Tony had stared at him in shock and then told Karen to free his schedule for that Saturday. The two had left at 6 in the morning, getting early access to the park because he was Tony Stark. Peter had groaned when he saw Tony, dressed in short Iron-Man swim-trunks and weird sunglasses. Meanwhile, Peter was wearing blue swim-trunks and a gray swim-shirt, horribly miss-matched, but excited. 

The first slide they went on was terrifying, but exhilarating for Peter. After that, he was like a kid in a candy-store. He was running around the park, going on slide after slide and eating a bunch of junk food. Mr. Stark was laughing at him the entire time. Tony and him raced down different slides and Peter cheered and laughed when he beat Tony. The biggest laugh came when Tony hit a patch of water on the way to a different slide and ended up falling right on his butt in the middle of the path. Peter had doubled over in laughter, not able to contain the amusement on his face. Tony was embarrassed, the great Iron Man just got flattened by a puddle. He got back at Peter by soaking him in the wade pool and dunking him in the lazy river. Overall, it was a good day.

The thought of the water-park brought on the water-works for Peter. He couldn’t handle it anymore. He needed Mr. Stark, he couldn’t do this anymore, it was too much for him. Peter didn’t have his rock anymore, he didn’t have a safe place to go to, the protector to hold onto. He took another long walk that day, this time though, the destination was different.

It was a cold day today, but Peter liked the cold. It reminded him that there were still bones and skin underneath the sadness and darkness that consumed him. He was wearing Mr. Stark’s old MIT sweatshirt and he rubbed his hands together in an attempt to gather some warmth. He walked for miles and miles, not really sure where he was headed, but he knew in his heart what his final destination would be. 

Peter found himself walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, wow he had made it that far. He hadn’t realized how long he had been walking for. It was early in the morning, about 4 a.m. and the Brooklyn Bridge was silent, as if it was sitting and waiting for Peter to come along. He hopped up on the side of the railing and looked out across the water. The wind blew across his face and he wiped away the tears that he didn’t even realize were streaming down his face. 

“I miss you, dad. I can’t do this anymore. I need you back, please come back to me.”

Peter prayed out-loud, as if his pleading would bring Tony back. He opened up his eyes, the glimmer of hope dying inside his soul as he saw that the bridge was still empty. 

“Dad I need you and if you can’t come back to me, then I need to come to you.”

Peter took a deep breath. 

“Hey Petey, everything is going to be okay,” his dad’s voice echoed in his head.

“The Decathlon super-star Peter-Parker-Stark!”   


“I’m a Stark, now?”   


“You always have been Peter and you always will be.”

“I’ll always be there to save you, Peter, whenever you need me. I’ll be there.”

Always… the thought echoed in his head as Peter took another breathe. The memories fell through his head as he fell through the air. 

“I will always be there to save you, Peter.”

But he couldn’t save him this time, he had said “always”, but he lied. He wasn’t there today, when he needed him the most. 

“I’ll see you soon, dad,” and Peter smiled. 

The water of the East River below the Brooklyn Bridge had never felt colder or harder than it did that morning. The waves of the river carrying away the memories of Tony Stark and his son, Peter Parker. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Comments and kudos are appreciated


End file.
